David R.M.Wilkinson
INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE IN DICKENS* HARD TIMES
I feel very honoured at being invited to address you, and even gratified
that - if I may be so indiscreet as to add that, when I asked what was expected
of me, I was told - it need not be too wetenschappelijk. Now I say I was
gratified, because that word wetenschappelijk worries me too.
The Universities here in Holland used to be under the Ministerie van
Onderwijs, Kunst en Wetenschappen, until some years ago when some Dr. Blimber
figure in The Hague had Kunst scrapped from this Trinity, and put it, I think,
with RecreatieNow Dickens might probably have gone along with this reallo
cation, if you recall what he has to say, in Little Dorrit, about the deadness
of the London Sunday, with nothing to do and no amusement whatever.
It v a Sunday evening in London, gloomy, close and stale.
Maddening church bells of all degrees of dissonance, sharp and flat,
cracked and clear, fast and slow, made the brick-and-mortar echoes
hideous. Melancholy streets in a penitential garb of soot, steeped
the souls of the people who were condemned to look at them out of
windows, in dire despondency. In every thoroughfare, up almost
every alley, and down almost every turning, some doleful bell was
throbbing, jerking, tolling, as if the Plague were in the city and
the deadcarts were going round. Everything was bolted and barred
that could by possibility furnish relief to an overworked people.
No pictures, no unfamiliar animals, no rare plants or flowers, no
natural or artificial wonders of the ancient world - all taboo with
that enlightened strictness, that the ugly South Sea gods in the
British Museum might have supposed themselves at home again. Nothing
to breathe but streets, streets, streets, Nothing to change the
brooding mind, or raise it up. Nothing for the spent toiler to do,
but to compare the monotony of his seventh day with the monotony of
his six days, think what a weary life he led, and make the best of
it - or the worst, according to the probabilities
Through the heart of the town a deadly sewer ebbed and flowed, in
the place of a fine fresh river. What secular want could the million
or so of human beings whose daily labour, six days in the week, lay
among these Arcadian objects, from the sweet sameness of which they
had no escape between the cradle and the grave - what secular want
could they possibly have upon their seventh day Clearly they could
want nothing but a stringent policemanpp28-29.)
